The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 eBook

He is an awkward infant giant,
The oak by the
roots uptearing;
He’ll beat you till
your backs are sore,
And crack your
crowns for daring.

He is like Siegfried, the
noble child,
That song-and-saga
wonder,
Who, when his fabled sword
was forged,
His anvil cleft
in sunder!

To you, who will our Dragon
slay,
Shall Siegfried’s
strength be given;
Hurrah! how joyfully your
nurse
Will laugh on
you from heaven!

The Dragon’s hoard of
royal gems
You’ll win,
with none to share it;
Hurrah! how bright the golden
crown
Will sparkle when
you wear it!

But it would not be stranger than many other things
which have happened in human history if the defeat
of German military imperialism should result in restoring
to Europe and spreading more widely over the world
the beneficent influence of Germanic civilization.
Certainly they are not the same thing, and they do
not stand or fall together.

GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD.

Yale University, Oct. 20, 1914.

Possible Profits From War

INTERVIEW WITH FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS.

Dr. Giddings is Professor of Sociology
and the History of Civilization at Columbia University;
author of many works on sociology and political
economy; President of Institut Internationale
de Sociologie, 1913.

By Edward Marshall.

No man in the United States is better entitled to
estimate the probable social and economic outcome
of the present European debacle than Prof. Franklin
H. Giddings of Columbia, one of the most distinguished
sociologists and political economists in the United
States.

“Today all Europe fights,” he said to
me, “but, also, today all Europe thinks.”

That is an impressive sentence, with which he concluded
our long talk, and with which I begin my record of
it.

He believes that this thinking of the men who crouch
low in the drenched trenches and of the women who
tragically wait for news of them will fashion a new
Europe.

He agrees with the remarkable opinions of President
Butler, that that new Europe will be marked by the
rise of democracy.

He sees the probability of broadened individual opportunity
in it, accompanied by the breaking down of international
suspicions; and he thinks that all these processes,
which surely make for peace, will surely bring a lasting
peace.

In the following interview, which Prof. Giddings
has carefully reread, will be found one of the most
interesting speculative utterances born of the war.

“The immediate economic cause of the war,”
said Prof. Giddings, “lay in the affairs
of Servia and Austria. Servia had been shut in.
She had been able to get practically nothing from,
and sell practically nothing to, the outside world,
save by Austria’s permission, while Austria,
with Germany professing fear of Slavic development,
for years had been taking every care to prevent the
Balkan peoples from having free access to the Adriatic.